The present invention relates to canister liners for use in medical fluid collection systems. More particularly, it relates to devices, systems, and methods for controlling longitudinal and lateral collapse of a liner bag within a canister during evacuation of medical fluids from the liner bag.
Hospitals and clinics routinely collect a significant volume of medical waste fluids. The medical waste fluids are collected from a variety of sites, including patient operative and post-operative sites, and various other locations within the hospitals and clinics. After the medical waste fluid is collected, there is a desire to dispose of the waste in a manner that protects healthcare workers and others from contact with the waste fluids, complies with hospital and other guidelines, and is cost effective.
Hospitals and clinics dispose of collected medical waste fluids in a variety of ways. For example, some medical waste is suited for disposal down a drain connected to a city sewer system. Some liquid medical waste is first solidified and then disposed of in a solid waste stream. For example, the addition of super absorbent polymers (as commonly used in infant diapers to solidify liquid waste) to medical waste liquids forms a solid gel that is more convenient to handle when disposing of the waste.
Other medical waste is collected in a rigid container and hauled away from the hospital or clinic by a contractor, usually for disposal in a landfill. Yet another method of disposing of collected medical waste includes safely pumping the collected medical waste from a canister system down a drain or other reservoir suitable for subsequent treatment and/or disposal. For example, one such suitable canister system is a Medi-Vac® Flex Advantage® suction canister available from Cardinal Health, Dublin, Ohio. This canister system includes a liner bag inside a rigid canister. Medical waste is collected in the liner bag and subsequently disposed of by having a worker insert a dip tube into the liner bag and safely pump the medical waste through the dip tube and out the liner bag. In this regard, the insertion of the dip tube into and out of the liner bag can be inconvenient to the worker. In addition, even after the medical waste is evacuated from the liner bag, these conventional liner bags can still be undesirably large and bulky. Some facilities require the worker to manually collapse the emptied liner bag before discarding it, which is time consuming and may be somewhat unpleasant for the worker.
All of the above-noted methods for collecting and disposing of medical waste require the eventual disposal of some sort of bulk material, whether in the form of a solidified gel or a used container or liner. Generally, the greater the amount of bulk material that is disposed of, the greater the ultimate economic cost for disposal, and this cost is borne by the hospital or clinic. In addition, the disposal of unnecessarily bulky material (i.e., material that occupies more landfill space) is environmentally undesirable. With this in mind, improvements in devices and systems that collect and enable the safe disposal of medical waste fluids will be enthusiastically welcomed by hospitals and clinics.